A.J. Mahari | Counselor, Life/Mental Health Coach

Menu

Why the BPD or Narcissist Can’t Get To Accountability

People with Borderline Personality Disorder and/or Narcissistic Personality Disorder are not people with a fully developed “Self”. They are arrested emotionally at a very young age. They did not progress through the healthy stages of required childhood development which means the difference essentially between having a cluster B personality disorder or not. They are too emotionally immature, so well defended against past wounds or perceived wounds or trauma that they have no concept of anything but being a victim. They cannot hold or tolerate at all the concept that they have done anything to you. They have cognitively distorted beliefs, to say the least, along with ingrained defenses that mean they have to (often subconsciously) project out their inner conflicts, shame, abandonment, lostness etc., on to others because they are just trying to survive. This does not mean they are not responsible and accountable for their words, actions and behavior, they are. They just don’t have any emotional concept of that at all.

It is more self-defeating, actually, in the long run, than it is worth, to continue to try to hold a Cluster B personality disordered individual accountable or responsible for what they are absolutely responsible for. It is important that you radically accept who this person is, and who they are not. That they are not who you might have thought they were. You need to learn to take care of yourself, and yes, deal with the pain of not only being abused, but of the loss that the reality of the Cluster B Personality Disordered person in your life is unable to understand at all. They are just too emotionally immature, too wounded, too defensive and just not capable of. This is one of the most painful realities to radically accept and stop trying to be heard and validated for what you are correct about. That it is much more helpful for you to take care of yourself by having boundaries and limits. If you are the parent of a teen or adult child with BPD especially it is important to learn skills yourself to cope with this and to not invalidate your adult child. Cluster B personality disordered people are right-fighting against actual past or perceived injustice. They come, at base, from a victim place. They cannot tolerate what they feel so they project it all out onto those closest. It is abusive. It is painful. But until and unless they get successful and highly skilled help, they will not ever grasp the accountability or responsibility that you so deserve to have validated, seen, and recognized.